The issue of gay teachers in Singapore

Thanks to Singapore Daily, I have had the chance to look at both sides of the argument on the S377A saga. Now there has been a lot of talk of late about gay teachers and I would like to join in the discussion because I have lived in the UK for many years now and we have plenty of gay teachers here - this is not just a British thing, but something that is common in almost all Western democracies. Over here, it's like, what's the big deal? We have not just gay teachers, but also gay entertainers on prime time TV, gay MPs, gay ministers, gay bishops in the church of England, gay celebrities, gay people are everywhere. Even in the popular C4 TV series Teachers, there is a gay teacher (the likable Mr Keating who teaches French). For me looking at you people in Singapore, it's like... what's the big deal? Come on people. Why are you guys making such a big fuss about this issue?

Now what really irks me about this issue is the way ignorant Singaporeans talk about this. If you are downright homophobic and don't want gays to be teachers because you simply hate gays, then fine - say so and be honest about it. But don't gimme the bullshit about, "oh we don't know what will happen if gays and lesbians are allowed to become teachers..." This has been done for decades in the West and indeed, even when I was in secondary school in Singapore, I was taught by a teacher who was clearly gay. Allow me to bring some common sense to the debate - Limpeh is so sick and tired of all you ignorant Singaporeans with your island mentality.

Do you care if your teacher is gay? 

There are too many f*cking retards who have no understanding about the teaching profession trying to talk about this issue. Good grief. Allow me to begin by telling you about a physics teacher I had in secondary school who was a Christian - did she try to invite her students to go to her church? Did she flaunt her religion in the classroom? No, she kept her personal life private and barely made any reference to her church activities (apart from once mentioning that she was going to church camp during the school holidays). If she had attempted to convert us to Christianity or preached the gospel to us in class or arranging an outing to her church, she would risk losing her job.

Allow me to state the obvious. There are very strict codes of conduct governing the behaviour of teachers in the work place - that was why my physics teacher couldn't invite me to her church whilst she was my teacher, but if she had encountered me outside the context of the student-teacher relationship, I am sure she would have no qualms about extending that friendly invitation or talking to us about her religion.

Teachers usually steer clear of anything personal in the classroom.

As all teachers are subject to very strict rules and regulations governing all areas their conduct at work, any teacher who breaks them could risk losing their jobs. Any discussion of teachers influencing their students must be set in the context of these very strict rules! There are clear rules about what is strictly inappropriate for a classroom environment and this code of conduct apply whether the teachers are gay, straight or bi. We had a case recently of a 30 year old maths teacher who ran away to France with a 15 year old female student after they began a sexual relationship (he's in jail now serving a very long sentence). Please, let's not assume that your students are in safe hands just because your teachers are heterosexual. We need to guard against all teachers (gay or straight, male or female, old or young) who may break the rules and harm the students in a variety of ways.

All teachers in the UK are subject to strict background checks - in fact, anyone working with children and vulnerable adults are subject to this same check, the "CRB - Criminal Record Background" check. This check will uncover anything that could lead to an individual being deemed unsuitable for his/her profession - for example, if an individual has been cautioned by the police for domestic violence after beating up his/her spouse and children, then clearly that individual has serious anger management issues and shouldn't be trusted in a classroom situation. Such people should quite rightfully be barred from the teaching profession. I would be far more worried about teachers with violent tendencies being in a classroom than say a gay teacher or a teacher who smokes.

Would you trust a teacher with anger management issues?

But who should you bar from teaching then? Would you include any adult who has had a divorce? How about an adult who has committed a minor criminal offence (eg. received a parking ticket by parking in a no-parking zone)? How about a teacher who is a single mother or who has had an abortion? Would you exclude teachers who confess to smoking regularly? Or a teacher who has a large tattoo on his arm or on his neck? How about a teacher who is of an ethnic minority and follows a different religion? Where do you draw the line?

Let's be sensible about this: in all of the cases above, it boils down to one question: does it affect the teacher's ability to carry out his/her job as a teacher effectively? So for example, would the fact that Mr Abdul is divorced impede his ability to explain how fractional distillation works to his class during a chemistry lesson? Or would the fact that Mr Muthusamy was fined for parking illegally in a no-parking zone impede his ability to teach his class how to solve quadratic equations during a maths lessons? Would the fact that Miss de Souza is a single mother affect her ability to explain the concept of photosynthesis to her class during a science lesson? By that token, would the fact that Mr Wang is bisexual affect his ability to explain the motivations of Hamlet to his English literature class?

What has sexuality got to do with a maths lesson?

Whether or not you like the fact that he is bisexual is not the issue here - the question is whether his sexuality would affect his performance as a teacher. We have all had teachers we didn't like for a range of reasons, but it has rarely ever stopped us from learning during their lessons. We need to look at this objectively - teachers are not competing in some kind of popularity contest to be liked by the students and parents, they are simply there to do a job they are paid for - please remember that and stop imagining that all students actually like their teachers. Most students barely tolerate some and try their best to ignore the others.

In all of the cases above, none of these factors would affect the teacher's ability to teach - those factors are simply irrelevant. Rather, whether or not any of these teachers are able to teach well depends on factors like how much time have they spent preparing for the lesson: have the teachers received adequate training for the subject matter? Do the teachers know how to cope with weaker students in the class? Are the teachers able to capture every single student's attention by delivering a fun and interesting lesson? Are the teachers able to motivate their students?

What makes a bad teacher?

Let me demonstrate my next point by asking you to take part in an experiment, okay? I want you to try to remember all the teachers you had when you were 12 years old. I choose 12 years old because that is usually the point where puberty has kicked in or is about to take place for a child - so it is a point in a child's life when the child first becomes interested in issues pertaining to sex and sexuality. Who were your teachers then, when you were 12? Can you tell me anything about their personal lives - were they gay or straight? Married or divorced? Did they have any children? Where did they live, in what kind of house? Do you remember anything at all about them?

Chances are, you would be struggling at this point to remember anything about your teachers - which is my next point: children just aren't interested in their teachers. In Singapore, we are conditioned to simply greet our teachers, "good morning/good afternoon teacher" and leave it at that - the teacher-student relationship is kept formal, respectful and distant. This means that as students, we were often clueless about our teachers' personal lives - not that we were interested anyway because what the teaches do in their personal lives is simply not relevant to what students go to school for. The teachers rarely talk about themselves because they know the students are just not interested. 

"Good morning teacher." 

You know, many of the people who believe in gay rights will approach this topic in quite a different manner from me - they will scream, "how dare you discriminate against gay teachers? Gay people have the right to work as teachers as well!  Gay people can make extremely good teachers! You're basing your entire argument on bigotry and homophobia!" I want to approach the same topic a different way. Many people who want to ban gay teachers are basing almost their entire argument on the fact that gay teachers may negatively influence their students - I think that's totally false because the amount of influence a teacher has on a student is so little and they're basing their entire argument on a gross exaggeration at best. Time for a reality check please! 

I suppose there was a time, when my parents were young - we're talking about the late 1940s and early 1950s. Not many people were even literate then and certainly in my father's hometown (which was a little kampong in rural Malaysia), if you needed help with an important letter or document, you would go approach the local teacher who was seen as the learned man for he was literate and well educated. Thus teachers back in those days enjoyed a special status in society for they seen as bastions of knowledge and virtue amongst mostly illiterate, ignorant people. People actually did listen to teachers then - but times have changed a lot since and teachers no longer have that status or power to influence today. So why are these people talking about gay teachers as if we're still living in a rural kampong in Malaysia in the early 1950s? Wake up and smell the coffee people.

Do you know what year it is?

Some parents argue that they are not homophobic but they don't want their children to be influenced by gay teachers. Really? What makes you think that any teacher (gay or straight) will have much influence over your child in the first place? Some parents might ask, "what if the child were to go ask the gay teacher if it was okay to be gay? What will the gay teacher tell the child?" As if that would happen actually! Firstly, we're not living in the 1950s where the students have no sources of information about sex and sexuality. There's the internet and it is far easier for the student to look up homosexuality on google then to pluck up the courage and have that awkward conversation with a teacher. Like, come on, get real people. Which student would choose to go and talk to a teacher about sex? A student is far more likely to turn to his/her peers for that kind of conversation rather than the maths teacher. Duh.

Reality check: parents often overestimate the influence teachers have over their students - heck, parents also grossly overestimate the influence they have over their own children. Most parents choose to ignore the obvious because embracing the truth is simply too scary for them to contemplate. Modern children are not just sponges that will readily absorb anything adults throw at them - hardly! Oh please. I have written a piece earlier to explain how I spent most of my childhood actively rebelling against my parents to vehemently reject everything they stood for. Children have so many sources of influence today from the internet to their peers - what makes you think they will value their parents' or teachers' opinion over Justin Bieber's? ("If Justin Bieber can smoke cannabis... see youtube clip below.")

As a child, I didn't have much respect for teachers - my parents were teachers and that made me acutely aware of the world of teachers from a very young age. Being able to see my parents' flaws so close up at home everyday made me realize that teachers are but humans and have plenty of flaws, bad habits and problems, just like everyone else. Why put them on a pedestal, expecting them to be role models for children - why set them up to fail like that when all they need to do really is to teach the children the designated subject at school? Get real people. Teachers are there to simply teach, not be your children's moral compass or role models.

I remember a James Bond film I saw in January 1990 (when I was in secondary 2): A License To Kill featuring Timothy Dalton. As I walked out of the cinema I was thinking, wow, that was exciting. I wanna grow up to be a spy and travel the world, doing dangerous and exciting missions like James Bond. Then the a few days later, during a particularly boring maths lesson at school, I started thinking about one of the more exciting fight sequences in the film where Bond has that underwater battle (see the youtube clip below, I found that very clip).

I then stared blankly at the fat maths teacher (who had these super thick glasses) droning on and on and I thought, what a fat loser you are. I don't want to grow up to be anything like you - did you think when you were a kid, I want to grow up to be a fat maths teacher? Are you disappointed in yourself? Your life must be so bloody boring as a maths teacher. You've just inspired me to want to study hard and do well because I want to grow up to be successful as I don't want to end up as a sad, fat, old maths teacher who doesn't even have the respect of his students. This maths teacher was an object of ridicule amongst the students who gave him a rather cruel nickname (which I shan't repeat here). Get real people. Even at that age, my role model wasn't my maths teacher, hell no - it was James Bond. I was old enough to decide whom my role models were going to be and whom I was going to take my values and morals from.

Whilst we're talking about my maths teacher, let's put some figures on it. I saw my maths teacher then for a few hours a week, but he taught many classes and say if he taught six classes of 30 students, that's already 180 students. That's a lot of maths homework for him to mark - I'm surprised he could even remember my name given how many students he has; and you expect him to take the effort to try to influence how I feel about something unrelated to maths, such as sex and sexuality? Get real. The poor guy had enough trouble getting me to hand up my homework on time. Do you people even have the faintest idea just how heavy a teacher's workload is? Because if you do, you'll realize that after they get through that workload, teachers will have neither the time nor the energy to indulge their students in anything else, they just want to go home, have dinner, have a shower, have dinner and unwind after a bloody hard day at work.

Most teachers are overworked and exhausted.

Young people today are not just relying on their parents and teachers to tell them what to think, what to believe in. In case you haven't noticed, we are living in the age of the internet: most young people have access to so much media online that will influence and shape their ideas and beliefs. What makes you think that their role models are going to be people they actually interact with - like their parents or teachers? Get real people - they are far more likely to be celebrities like Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus or G-Dragon, or maybe a sports star like Usain Bolt or Cristiano Ronaldo. If you are a parent today, I suggest you get acquainted with whatever singer or celebrity your child is obsessed with because that idol is probably going to be the biggest influence of your child's formative years.

So whilst some people may argue that it is a case of gay rights to allow openly gay people to work as teachers, my argument is quite simply: who cares? Why should it matter at all? Why are you guys making such a big deal about teachers? You're all discussing this as if the teachers play such a huge part in nurturing a child's development - when really, the teacher's role is so very limited. How many of you actually did everything your teachers told you, believed every word your teachers have have told you? Or were you, like me, sitting at the back of the class thinking, "yeah right, I don't believe you. What do you know about the big bad world out there beyond the school gates? You're just a teacher. You're not a president, not a CEO, not an Olympic gold medalist, not a spy, not a famous celebrity, in fact you're not even interesting at all - you're just a boring old school teacher. Years after I finish my education, you'll still be stuck here in this school whilst I would've gone on to do far more interesting things with my life. Adios!"

Given how a teacher actually has such limited influence over a child's development in this day and age, really, should we even care what the teacher gets up to in his/her private life? I say, who gives a shit? Really. It's time for a major reality check people. I'm not even trying to preach gay rights or the equality mantra to you at this point (I will save that for another day), I'm just telling you to take a closer look at the realities of the life of teachers. Feel free to leave a comment below if you have something to say on the issue. Thank you for reading.

Akan datang: two interviews with two gay teachers. I am going to be interviewing a gay teacher in Singapore and one in London to compare and contrast their experiences. I have the same set of questions for the both of them and you'll be amazed how their answers can differ at times but be scarily similar at other times.